Ocelot – “Femme” Virunga, DR Congo, Dark Milk 55%

About the bar

This 55% organic dark milk bar was created to celebrate women, as the beans were grown by a pioneering women’s cooperative in the Eastern Congo.

About the maker

Ocelot was founded by Matt and Ish, who met behind a fridge door at a party (while on the hunt for a snack) on a snowy Christmas night in Scotland. Inspired by a mutual passion for cooking and eating delicious things, the couple established Ocelot just two weeks after they got married in 2013. With their wedding gift money, Matt and Ish invested in a small tempering machine and a trademark, and started producing chocolate in their apartment which they later sold at farmers markets. Despite quickly gaining a mass of followers and moving into a factory with a production team, an ambitious expansion project and the financial turmoil of 2022 took them under. Thankfully, they were saved by their long-time supplier, Original Beans, and now have a new factory and production team based in Dundee, Scotland.

About the beans

In 2008, Original Beans kicked off a partnership with a few hundred women to grow cocoa and achieve a direct trade price premium. These women, and their bars, are known as the Femmes de Virunga. They have planted more than a quarter of a million cacao trees and approximately forty thousand shade trees. And in late 2016, these women founded one of the world’s first female cacao cooperatives. Their bars, made from the rare Amelonado cacao, are a triple-delight: delicious chocolate, empowering women, and protecting the Virunga, home to the world’s last remaining mountain gorillas.

Allergens*

May contain peanuts, milk, may contain nuts

Ingredients

Cacao mass, raw cane sugar, cacao butter, whole milk powder

*Allergen advice: We directly import, and purchase, all products from independent makers and have these shipped by our partner warehouse (which is not certified allergen-free), and so we cannot guarantee that any product will be allergen-free. Even where an allergen is not listed, products may have been produced, shipped, or stored in facilities which handle allergens.

If you would like further information about a specific product, please contact us on [email protected] or contact the maker directly.